The Use of Marketing Automation in a B2B Sales Cycle

B2B organisations tend to have long, convoluted sales cycles that require  the involvement of multiple key influencers to arrive at a purchase decision on behalf of their company. This process can be hectic and include a multitude of touch points in the cycle that if the process is not properly automated at every step of the way you can end up with under-qualified leads and mistake them for qualified ones and vice versa. You can miss out on great business opportunities and fail to increase your deal size. So, it is important to have a marketing automation strategy in place that is built around your brand awareness and value-sharing with the aim to draw new vendors and retain the existing ones.

 

You can outsource the process of automating your B2B sales cycle to a marketing automation agency so that they help you steer clear of the challenges that are inherent in the long sales cycle of a B2B business.  The following are the processes you can streamline with the help of marketing automation services:

 

1.      Lead Scoring and Segmentation

Marketing automation services can help you optimize your first engagement points that include the landing page of your website, email marketing, social media engagement etc. with content and offers that comel your prospects to click on your CTA. It creates a win-win situation where the prospects get the promised content and you get their contact information which becomes the starting point of your lead generation database. Based on the engagement levels of each lead, marketing automation processes can help in persona segmentation, ensuing campaigns tailored to each segment.

 

2.      Lead Management and Conversion

Instead of applying the same campaign tactics to all of your contacts, marketing automation tools can help you score leads and tailor campaigns according to each segment of personas in your contact list. For instance, one segment can receive emails on product discounts to entice them into buying while the other segment can receive free newsletters to pique their curiosity.

 

3.      Streamlining Efforts on Key Accounts

As your prospects reach the end of their purchasing cycle, you can direct your marketing efforts with the sales team for successfully closing the deal. Automation processes like account based marketing services can help you with that- the alignment of your sales and marketing efforts which is a dire need for B2B marketers for turning those high-value accounts into loyal customers. With an automation strategy in place, marketing and sales teams can come up with scheduled and targeted campaigns for such prospects. 

 

Now, there are many automation tools and services available online or offline agencies that can help you join the marketing automation bandwagon so that you can leverage the most out of your B2B business.